Wait. Those aren’t ghosts.
Flashlights. We’re being chased by cemetery security. Well, fuck a duck. We’re booking it through the world’s most impossible obstacle course. I count three beams behind me. There’s more of us than there are of them, which means maybe one of us will be lucky enough to survive the night.
“Go go go!” Silas shouts over his shoulder.
Amara screams. She’s done for, I know it. There’s no way she’s going to make it. I’ll bail her out later, I promise myself. My parents will fork over the money to spring her from jail. Can you even bail a pal out on your Amex?
Tobias takes the lead. He doesn’t even look back. Fucking long-legged gazelle in drain-pipe jeans. He’s leaping over graves like his life depends on it. Oh shit oh shit oh shit, he pants between each pump of his legs before banking left and vanishing among the headstones. Good as ghosted.
Silas hasn’t let go of my wrist, thank god. I’d be done for without him leading the way, guiding me through the endless maze of graves. I’m thinking far too linearly to be running for my life right now. I want to run straight while the headstones won’t stay in a single-file line.
The cherubs cheer us on, clapping their tiny hands. A granite angel solemnly shakes her head. I can’t help but think of my mom, how disappointed she’d be in me right now.
“Run faster,” Silas says. “Come on, Erin!”
He yanks my arm to the left and it nearly pops out of its socket. Before I can see where I’m falling, we land on the ground. Blades of grass scratch my neck. Silas presses his palm over my mouth and I know I’m supposed to be still, be quiet, but everything inside me is shrieking.
A grave. We’re lying on someone’s grave, hiding behind their tombstone.
I’m trying so hard to hold my breath as a rent-a-cop waddles right on by, key chain jangling. Silas and I cling to each other and squeeze, compressing our bodies together to fit behind the headstone. Even after the guard passes us, we don’t move until we know for certain the coast is clear.
“Think we can make a break for it?” he asks. I inhale Silas’s words. I can taste them on my tongue. The sun will be coming up in a couple hours. We could run or we could…
“Stay.” I kiss him so hard that the back of his head hits marble but he doesn’t pull away. I run my fingers through his hair and can feel dead leaves tangled within it. “Stay with me.”
I want to keep hidden within the shadow of the tombstone, our heads pressed against it, chests rising and falling with every frantic breath, hearts never settling, inhales tethering together until we’ve syncopated our exhales, breathing in and out in unison, sharing a pair of lungs.
My hand wanders down his chest and lands on his pants.
“What’re you doing?” he asks.
“What do you think?”
“You sure? I don’t have any protection on me.”
“Yes.”
“We have to keep quiet.”
“Very quiet,” I whisper.
Silas’s hand runs down my waist. That’s his hand, isn’t it? It takes a moment for me to realize those aren’t the infinitesimal legs of a centipede lockstepping their way across my skin.
I need to focus on his body. Focus on his flesh. Focus on his hands. I can feel the coarseness of his fingertips as they tunnel beneath my shirt—and for just a moment, I slip out of reality. They’re not his fingers anymore but the squiggly insects that call these coffins home, that squirm through the muck and mud and feast on the flesh of every last corpse in this godforsaken cemetery. Long forgotten starlets. The corpses of dead Confederate generals.
And now me. I’m next. I have this stupid poem running through my head from when I was a kid—the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, the worms play pinochle on your snout—and now that I’ve thought it, I can’t un-think it.
The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out—
Silas’s fingers burrow their way into my body.
worms crawl in—
I know I’m just buckling under a bad trip, but it doesn’t stop the worms from foraging through my skin. I need to stay focused. Follow Silas through.
worms crawl out—
Silas’s lips mash into mine, but his lips aren’t lips, they’re maggots. I feel one slip in and tumble upon my tongue, down my throat.
worms play—
My zipper exhales. Silas has found what he’s looking for. What I’ve offered. I just have to work through the trip. If I keep my eyes closed, it won’t be so bad. I just have to hold on to Silas.
Hold on…
Hold…
Now I hear them. All of them below. The dead. We must have woken them. Agitated their eternal slumber. Now they’re moving around, tumbling in their caskets, awake and aware of us writhing above them. I can hear the creaking of their brittle fists and I can’t stop myself from picturing them all jacking off just underneath us, hundreds of bones draped in papery husks, buffeting against the tight confines of their coffins.
We’ve raised the dead. Every last gasp, every slipping sigh that escapes my mouth must send them into a frenzy. They’re cheering Silas on with their parched voices, Go go go!
They want me.
I can’t feel Silas anymore. The second he releases himself inside me, his body loses all of its contours. The entirety of his physical being bursts over me and the thing I’m holding in my arms is no longer flesh but a knot of worms, all of them tangled into one another, writhing against my skin, working their way through me and over me and oh god they won’t stop squirming they’re feeding on me crawling in crawling out playing pinochle on my snout.
datestone
I can’t pick up a pulse. There’s no responsiveness. No breath. Vitals all point toward a code blue. It’s going to take a second for the defibrillator to charge up and that’s a second I don’t have. I’m losing him. I can launch into CPR, but I usually save that for the end of the night.
“I hear they’ve got good chicken wings,” Tanner says.
I should just call it. Announce the time of death on this blind date, bag it and tag it before happy hour ends—but no, I’m not giving up. No one dies tonight. Not on my watch.
The waiter finally arrives with my G&T, not a moment too soon. Every sip counts here, so I quickly apply the pads—Clear!—hoping to jolt some life back into this conversation.
“So,” I start.
“So,” he echoes, drumming his fingers against the table.
Nothing. Still can’t hear a heartbeat. I ask the waiter to prep another round of epinephrine, raising my already half-empty glass, the swirling ice clink-clinking inside.
“How do you know Amara?” I ask.
“Catering.”
“You’re in catering?”
“No, no. She was catering this thing my company was sponsoring.”
“Your company? I didn’t know you—”
“The company I work for.” I think he just blushed. Check out those cheeks! Is Tanner getting sheepish on me? “I spotted her on her smoke break. She got me high in the parking lot.”
Sounds about right. “Amara to the rescue!” I lift my glass in a salute.
“She told me she had a friend she thought I’d be a good match for and…”
“…Here we are.” I’m surprised that Amara would think Tanner was the right call for me. He’s cute but plushie. Not a tattoo on him. Probably gets carded all the time, which no doubt embarrasses him. His clothes are crisp, right off the rack. His cologne competes with the juniper berries in my gin but he bathed, so he’s already a step ahead of the dudes in band tees I tend to cycle through. Plus he knows how to make a reservation.
“You know what this building used to be?” I ask.
“Should I?”
“This used to be part of a plantation house. We’re sitting in the slave quarters.”
I watch Tanner’s Adam’s apple take the plunge.